Which of the following archetypes would work best with adding guns to them? I was thinking of a gun mage with spontaneous spell casting and bard seemed a good route to without multiclassing.
Archaeologist, Arcane Duelist, or Dervish Dancer?
Anyone? Hello? I've been leaning towards Arcane Duelist.
Oh.
My.
God.
Please, I beg of you, make a Dervish Dancer Gunslinger. I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier. One level of Mysterious Stranger will give you a grit pool based off of your Cha instead of Wis and profiencies, and then full Dervish Dancer will cause you to become a storm of bullets flying around the battle field. Screw the numbers, this is bad ass!
My girlfriend is presently running an Ifrit Arcane Duelist Mysterious stranger. She looked at doing Dervish Dancer and we built both but she liked being able to fall back on party buffs sometimes. Needless to say MS + AD is pretty fun. Being to cast Abundant Ammunition is damn useful too. Last I saw she was MS2 AD3 and planning on doing MS5, AD 15.
Dot.
I played a straight bard in a campaign where guns were common proficiencies. It was a load of fun. Bards were made to sling guns! My character was a gambler (doc holiday type) bastard who was also the party healer. I had six guns. Two on the hip, two on shoulder harness, and two dragon pistols behind the back. One was cold iron shot, one was silver, and two were regular shot.
I like this idea a lot, its one i have been pondering for awhile as a sort of "archer" bard.
I would SKIP Mysterious Stranger. You lose Quick Clear, which is pretty harsh.
The wording of Grit says you get Grit Points equal to your WIS modifier (minimum 1). So, a score of 7-12 in wisdom is the exact same for purposes of Grit. You need at least 14 points in WIS just to gain 1 more point of Grit. A lot of Bards have a 10 in WIS. (or even less, rarely more)
Since most combat Bards rarely start with much more than 14-16 CHA either, Mysterious Stranger is getting you 1-2 points of Grit, and if you misfire your gun is broken for the rest of combat.
SO, I suggest...
Gunslinger 1/Bard X
Get Rapid Reload, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot. Instead of Deadly Aim, Get Arcane Strike. Adds damage for no penalty, but eats your swift action. Later you might want it for something else, but early-mid levels its fine. Then get Deadly Aim, Improved Precise Shot, and maybe Clustered Shots.
Arcane Strike will make up for not getting DEX to damage, like a level 5 gunslinger would. It will also be a damage option when you feel Deadly Aim might not hit.
Don't skip Mysterious Stranger- just make sure to get mending as one of your cantrips. Also, don't get Arcane Strike if you go Mysterious Stranger, the +CHA modifier to damage takes a swift action to activate.
Depends on how expensive guns are... Grab a couple, and as they brake, switch out and cast mending on them later.
Edit: ninja'd
Don't skip Mysterious Stranger- just make sure to get mending as one of your cantrips. Also, don't get Arcane Strike if you go Mysterious Stranger, the +CHA modifier to damage takes a swift action to activate.
DO skip Mysterious Stranger. The only thing it does of any worth is key Grit off of CHA... which as I pointed out above is gaining you often a SINGLE grit point over vanilla Gunslinger.
Plus, the deeds you get for losing Quick Clear suck. Focused Aim? Its a pretty bad ability.
Mending is a non answer, it has a casting time of 10 minutes. So, effectively if your gun does misfire and break, you are STILL non functioning as far as combat goes.
I don't remember the last time I had a combat encounter last 10 minutes in game anyway. You finish casting mend while you fail to contribute to anything else, and once its done... combat has been over for 8 minutes.
Jury-Rig is a plausible answer, as a level 1 spell... but it has a 1 round/level limit, and then your gun is broken again.
EDIT:Skipping Arcane Strike for the Mysterious Strangers +CHA mod. to damage is a bad idea. Arcane Strike does that for free, scales to bard caster level (95% of the build)and doesn't scale to attribute investment which requires lots of gold or precious free attribute boosts.
Arcane Strike is equal by caster level 5 (assuming 14 CHA, which is standard for both combat Bards and Mysterious Strangers), and gets better from there.
So really, the best thing to do... is skip Mysterious Stranger.
Yeah, sorry. You are definitely going to want to cast mending out of combat, since it's a 10 minute cast. If you can't get yourself backup guns, you probably want to take Kat's advice, taking Gunslinger pretty much just for the quick-clear, EWP, and gunsmithing.
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I would prefer higher DEX than 14 for a build that has 3/4 BAB. Yes, you are still hitting touch AC, but you want to be able to add Deadly Aim to that for as many shots as possible.
I would switch DEX and CHA, add my racial bonus (Human for the feats) to DEX.
This will help mitigate the 3/4 BAB, and help maximize Deadly Aim use.
STR 10
DEX 16 (18)
CON 14
INT 10
WIS 10
CHA 14
I asked about this before. Try looking at this thread.
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Kat Tenser, the MS can also add Cha bonus to damage. That is HUGE. My pally/ms has 20 Cha, so when smiting evil, her pistol is at +12 (1d8+9/x4). That is at level 3.
When it breaks, it sucks. But she isn't a one-trick pony. When that happens, she turns to her secondary role as healer/intimidator.
For a bard/ms, I would use buffer as a good secondary role. Mend the broken guns between encounters. Only use your bardic performance on encounters when your gun breaks, that way you are contributing every encounter, either striking or buffing.
The thing is, Bards rarely invest that much into CHA. You don't have any mechanical benefit for having more than 16 CHA, the most needed to cast your spells.
Combat bards dont focus on spells with save DCs, and the performances bards use 95% of the time don't depend on CHA for anything. They have no class abilities that truly gain much by having a very high CHA.
Paladins have Smite Evil AC bonuses, Divine Grace, Lay On Hands, Channel Positive Energy, and spells. THe more CHA a paladin has, the more numerical, mechanical bonuses they get.
Mysterious Stranger just isn't that good. They can add CHA mod to damage for however many grit points they have... often equal CHA mod. For your Paladin example, 5 times/day.
You can add Arcane Strike to damage (+4 or 5 at highest levels) an infinite amount of times to your attacks.
Arcane Strike does comparable amounts of damage/round, and can be added to ALL your attacks in a day. Ergo, Arcane Strike is better unless you have insanely high CHA.
Arcane Duelist seems like the best choice. However, unless guns are common in your campaign, you'll need a level 1 dip into gunslinger. If guns are common, all you need is the heirloom weapon trait and you're good to go.
If you want to go straight bard,I suggest you take the archeologist archetype and take the two rogue talents in the UC that deal with firearms.
No optimizing,no multiclassing, not OP but still fun as hell!
Archeologist means you have to wait until 4th level to use a gun. At best, this still makes you feat starved.
Id just get a bunch of drop guns.
dont worry about quick clear.
When I played a gunslinger (before they were banned from our table by my wife) I carried 6 double barreled pistols on weapon cords tied off to my belt. I never needed more than that in a single combat, ever.
If it misfires just drop the gun and yank another, out of ammo? drop it yank another.
Mend and reload later.
If you need more, and guns arent hacking it youre still bard with spells and other abilities.
I'd like to look at some kind of a Bard/gunslinger/segwaying into Battleherald somehow LOL.... Just call me CUSTER!
How awesome that would be! my instrument could be a bugle!
Id just get a bunch of drop guns.
dont worry about quick clear.
...
That's actually what they did in the old west. Gunslingers carried many guns on them. Not for duel-wielding, but in case a gun jammed or ran out of ammo, they simply pulled out another one.
That's actually what they did in the old west. Gunslingers carried many guns on them. Not for duel-wielding, but in case a gun jammed or ran out of ammo, they simply pulled out another one.Id just get a bunch of drop guns.
dont worry about quick clear.
...
problem is that in a world of magic weapons, that becomes an expensive proposition... or you run the risk of not effectively dealing damage or piercing damage reduction.
problem is that in a world of magic weapons, that becomes an expensive proposition... or you run the risk of not effectively dealing damage or piercing damage reduction.That's actually what they did in the old west. Gunslingers carried many guns on them. Not for duel-wielding, but in case a gun jammed or ran out of ammo, they simply pulled out another one.Id just get a bunch of drop guns.
dont worry about quick clear.
...
I seemed to always make it work with my six different guns. 2 were enchanted for optimal combat use, two were masterwork that had silver or cold iron shot, and the dragon pistols were for fun... Lots of fun...
At least bards get access to abundant ammunition to offset the need for so many magic weapons.
At least bards get access to abundant ammunition to offset the need for so many magic weapons.
Yes, Bards (casters in general) are cool like that.
This thread has done nothing to change my theory that bards could make great gunslingers.
well thats the thing you dont need magic guns, magic ammo will do fine.
well, I would still want all of those guns to be +1 distance... or use one +5 distance holy corrosive lucky pistol.
Either or, it all works.
Sound Striker Bard is notoriously up for debate as to RAW, and RAI. Whether each d8+CHA affects a DIFFERENT target, if they can all stack on the same, whether each d8 gets a saving roll, etc.
Conductive adds a new element of confusion: can it channel all (up to 10) attacks, each a different targets or not?
Anyway, i think its fairly clear that Gunslinger 1/Bard X is not a bad choice, and is completely viable.